Congress has responded strongly to a joint investigation by CBS and The Washington Post (archive) about Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) employees becoming lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry, and the passage of a bill in 2016 hobbling the DEA's ability to go after opioid distributors and suspicious drug sales:

Drug overdose deaths in the United States have more than doubled over the past decade. The CDC says 188,000 people have died from opioid overdoses from 1999 to 2015.

Joe Rannazzisi used to run the DEA's diversion control. He told "60 Minutes" correspondent Bill Whitaker that the opioid crisis was aided in part by Congress, lobbyists and the drug distribution industry. The DEA says it has taken actions against far fewer opioid distributors under a new law. A Justice Department memo shows 65 doctors, pharmacies and drug companies received suspension orders in 2011. Only six of them have gotten them this year.

[...] [The] DEA's efforts may have been undermined by the so-called "revolving door" culture in Washington. At least 46 investigators, attorneys and supervisors from the DEA, including 32 directly from the division that regulates the drug industry, have been hired by the pharmaceutical industry since the scrutiny on distributors began.

From The Washington Post:

The chief advocate of the law that hobbled the DEA was Rep. Tom Marino, a Pennsylvania Republican who is now President Trump's nominee to become the nation's next drug czar. Marino spent years trying to move the law through Congress. It passed after Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) negotiated a final version with the DEA.

For years, some drug distributors were fined for repeatedly ignoring warnings from the DEA to shut down suspicious sales of hundreds of millions of pills, while they racked up billions of dollars in sales. The new law makes it virtually impossible for the DEA to freeze suspicious narcotic shipments from the companies, according to internal agency and Justice Department documents and an independent assessment by the DEA's chief administrative law judge in a soon-to-be-published law review article. That powerful tool had allowed the agency to immediately prevent drugs from reaching the street.

Political action committees representing the industry contributed at least $1.5 million to the 23 lawmakers who sponsored or co-sponsored four versions of the bill, including nearly $100,000 to Marino and $177,000 to Hatch. Overall, the drug industry spent $102 million lobbying Congress on the bill and other legislation between 2014 and 2016, according to lobbying reports.

Among the other recommendations were to rapidly increase treatment capacity for those who need substance abuse help; to establish and fund better access to medication-assisted treatment programs; and to make sure that health care providers are aware of the potential for misuse and abuse of prescription opioids by enhancing prevention efforts at medical and dental schools.

President Trump also decried a slowdown in federal prosecutions of drug crimes and a reduction in sentence lengths. Activists and policy experts are wary of an enforcement-heavy approach:

Bill Piper, senior director for the Drug Policy Alliance, told CNN Tuesday that stricter enforcement "has never worked" and the President would be "better focusing on the treatment side of things." "A supply side approach to drugs has never worked," Piper said. "That is what has been tried for decades and it has failed for every drug it has applied to, including alcohol during Prohibition. As long as there has been and[sic] demand for drugs, there will be a supply." Trump would not be the first administration to crack down on drug use by focusing on enforcement, but Piper said doing so would play into a desire to "sound tough," not actually solve the problem. "It makes it look like they are doing something even when they are not," Piper said.

Trump also advocated for more abstinence-based treatment to combat the opioid crisis. "The best way to prevent drug addiction and overdose is to prevent people from abusing drugs in the first place. If they don't start, they won't have a problem. If they do start, it's awfully tough to get off," Trump said. That sort of strategy advocates for targeting kids and young adults with anti-drug messaging, evocative of the "Just Say No" ad campaign of the 1980s and early 1990s.

"It is a serious problem the likes of which we have never had. You know when I was growing up, they had the LSD and they had certain generations of drugs. There's never been anything like what's happened to this country over the last four or five years. And I have to say this in all fairness, this is a worldwide problem, not just a United States problem. This is happening worldwide. But this is a national emergency, and we are drawing documents now to so attest."

Since 2009, hospital intensive care units have witnessed a stark increase in opioid-related admissions and deaths, according to new study led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s (BIDMC) Center for Healthcare Delivery Science. Published online today ahead of print in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society, the study is believed to be the first to quantify the impact of opioid abuse on critical care resources in the United States. The findings reveal that opioid-related demand for acute care services has outstripped the available supply.

Analyzing data from the period between January 1, 2009 and September 31, 2015, the researchers documented a 34 percent increase in overdose-related ICU admissions. The average cost of care per ICU overdose admissions rose by 58 percent, from $58,517 in 2009 to $92,408 in 2015 (in 2015 dollars). Meanwhile opioid deaths in the ICU nearly doubled during that same period. "This study tells us that the opioid epidemic has made people sicker and killed more people, in spite of all the care we can provide in the ICU, including mechanical ventilation, acute dialysis, life support and round-the-clock care," said the study's lead author, Jennifer P. Stevens, MD, associate director of the medical intensive care unit at BIDMC and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

[...] These data not only document the scope of the opioid abuse epidemic, they also reveal its complexity. Stevens and colleagues suggest that any opioid overdose-related admission is a preventable one, and that the team's findings not only represent the need for increased acute care resources, but also for expanded opioid-abuse prevention and treatment.

Drug-store chain CVS Health announced Thursday that it will limit opioid prescriptions in an effort to combat the epidemic that accounted for 64,000 overdose deaths last year alone.

Amid pressure on pharmacists, doctors, insurers and drug companies to take action, CVS also said it would boost funding for addiction programs, counseling and safe disposal of opioids.

[...] The company's prescription drug management division, CVS Caremark, which provides medications to nearly 90 million people, said it would use its sweeping influence to limit initial opioid prescriptions to seven-day supplies for new patients facing acute ailments.

It will instruct pharmacists to contact doctors when they encounter prescriptions that appear to offer more medication than would be deemed necessary for a patient's recovery. The doctor would be asked to revise it. Pharmacists already reach out to physicians for other reasons, such as when they prescribe medications that aren't covered by a patient's insurance plan.

The plan also involves capping daily dosages and initially requiring patients to get versions of the medications that dispense pain relief for a short period instead of a longer duration.

[...] "The whole effort here is to try to reduce the number of people who are going to end up with some sort of opioid addiction problem," CVS Chief Medical Officer Troyen Brennan said in an interview.

It appears this initiative is limited to initial filling of prescriptions — there is no mention of changes in the handling of refills.

After Googling phrases such as "fentanyl for sale," Senate investigators followed up with just six of the online sellers they found. This eventually led them to 500 financial transaction records, accounting for about $766 million worth of fentanyl entering the country and at least seven traceable overdose deaths.

[...] "Thanks to our bipartisan investigation, we now know the depth to which drug traffickers exploit our mail system to ship fentanyl and other synthetic drugs into the United States," Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio said in a statement. "The federal government can, and must, act to shore up our defenses against this deadly drug and help save lives."

Pain-pill giant Purdue Pharma LP will stop promoting its opioid drugs to doctors, a retreat after years of criticism that the company's aggressive sales efforts helped lay the foundation of the U.S. addiction crisis.

The company told employees this week that it would cut its sales force by more than half, to 200 workers. It plans to send a letter Monday to doctors saying that its salespeople will no longer come to their clinics to talk about the company's pain products.

"We have restructured and significantly reduced our commercial operation and will no longer be promoting opioids to prescribers," the company said in a statement. Instead, any questions doctors have will be directed to the Stamford, Connecticut-based company's medical affairs department.

OxyContin, approved in 1995, is the closely held company's biggest-selling drug, though sales of the pain pill have declined in recent years amid competition from generics. It generated $1.8 billion in 2017, down from $2.8 billion five years earlier, according to data compiled by Symphony Health Solutions. It also sells the painkiller Hysingla.

Do you support "re-arming" the DEA?Do you support "re-arming" the DEA?(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 17 2017, @06:19AM
(8 children)

I'll consider supporting the "re-arming" of the DEA when anyone can show me the authority given to the federal government to give to the DEA to ban/restrict/prohibit possession/use/commerce involving any sort of plant or drug. (For simplicity's sake, let's start with substances grown and used within the same State, to fend off the "if it's interstate commerce, it's bannable!" folk.)

If it turns out that the DEA has no authority to kidnap people, steal their possession, and throw them in cages... what would we then call DEA agents' activity? Is there a simple word to describe the actions they take without legitimate authority?

Re:Do you support "re-arming" the DEA?Re:Do you support "re-arming" the DEA?(Score: 2, Disagree) by stormreaver on Tuesday October 17 2017, @11:52AM
(5 children)

I'll consider supporting the "re-arming" of the DEA when anyone can show me the authority given to the federal government to give to the DEA to ban/restrict/prohibit possession/use/commerce involving any sort of plant or drug.

I'm not going to debate this in subsequent postings, since I already know you've made up your mind; and no facts will ever change it. But the end of Article 1, Section 8 is the authority you seek:

The Congress shall have Power...To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper forcarrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all otherPowers vested by this Constitution in the Government ofthe United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Congress has the power to make any law that does not conflict with the Constitution. Although they frequently make stupid laws, the Constitution grants them the power to do so. That power includes making laws that establish Federal agencies, and the power to destroy those same Federal agencies.

Re:Do you support "re-arming" the DEA?(Score: 5, Informative) by JNCF on Tuesday October 17 2017, @12:18PM

"All Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, " != "any law that does not conflict with the Constitution," the reason they call this the elastic clause is because some folks like to stretch the semantics of it.

Re:Do you support "re-arming" the DEA?(Score: 4, Informative) by Virindi on Tuesday October 17 2017, @02:06PM

The text you quoted does not say anything like your interpretation. Let's examine the text and determine the modern English meaning.

all Laws which shall be necessary and proper

This part is pretty easy. "Laws needed".

for carrying into Execution

A modifier for "laws needed", those needed in the "execution". What is execution? It is close to a synonym for "enforcement". It is the action of the government which compels those laws to be followed, the action which brings about the result directed by those laws. "Executing" a law is to cause it to have effect in the world. This is the same meaning that applies to the "Executive" Branch.

Okay! What can they execute?

the foregoing Powers

Webster defines "foregoing" as: "listed, mentioned, or occurring before". The powers mentioned previously in the text of the Constitution. Typically in laws, this type of statement applies to things in the same section. Whether it applies to this section only or the entire previous text is immaterial here. We will assume it means the entire previous text for simplicity.

and all other Powers vested by this Constitution

So not only the powers previously mentioned, but additionally, all powers given by the Constitution.

in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof

...to the federal government.

Okay, we're done. Here's what we have:

"The Congress shall have power to make"..."laws needed" "to enforce" "powers previously listed" "and all other powers listed in the Constitution" "which are given to the federal government".

You said:

Congress has the power to make any law that does not conflict with the Constitution.

But this is not so, they only have the power to make laws which enforce previously listed and otherwise granted powers, not just anything nonconflicting.

Re:Do you support "re-arming" the DEA?(Score: 4, Informative) by Whoever on Tuesday October 17 2017, @04:02PM

Please show me where the Constitution grants the power to Congress to regulate what substances we can put into our bodies.

It took an amendment to the Constitution to ban alcohol. Now, because the Supreme Court re-wrote the Commerce Clause in Wickard v. Filburn and subsequent cases, apparently Congress can do this.

But that doesn't make the decision correct. If Republicans and "Originalists" had any integrity, they would acknowledge that the word "affects" does not appear in the Commerce Clause and that Wickard v. Filburn and all the decisions that follow it were wrongly decided.

Re:Do you support "re-arming" the DEA?Re:Do you support "re-arming" the DEA?(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 17 2017, @03:59PM
(1 child)

Is there a simple word to describe the actions they take without legitimate authority?

Yes. Illegal is the word you're looking for.

Men aren't angels, so they decided to voluntarily give up some of their natural sovereignty to a central body that was had an enumeration of specific powers it was granted. At least that's how the myth goes.

But yet, and this is the kicker! Holy shit men aren't angels. Nobody challenged the gradual usurpation of more and more of their sovereignty, the overreach by this central body. Additionally, they did not include some means, such as a coming-of-age ritual, whereby new humans gain their sovereignty and become adults, that new humans may then each, on and individual basis, voluntarily consent to relinquishing their newly obtained sovereignty as a consequence of the coming of age!

So it goes. Even if we consider that all of us who were violently imposed upon may yet be willing to voluntarily and partially relinquish the inherent sovereignty that nature's goddess gave us when we were created, the written agreement, this "Constitution," does not grant this body any power whatsoever to create a legal construction called contraband!

The whole thing is a farce, and I can confirm that the system, as it is found in 2017 CE, constitutes nothing more than a violently imposed monopoly.

Here my beef with anarcho-capitalism was that it cannot function so long as men have not yet become angels. What I didn't expect was that men are nothing more than talking animals.

Anarcho-capitalism cannot function with talking animals, either. So I don't know where that leaves us. Expect 100,000 more years of tribal war, technological ascents, descents into dark ages, lost technologies that are indistinguishable from magic, wars, slavery, and lots of poo-flinging.

The thing that really depresses me is that there's no guarantee that in 100,000 years men will have evolved into angels. Evolution doesn't work that way.

Re:Do you support "re-arming" the DEA?(Score: 3, Interesting) by JNCF on Wednesday October 18 2017, @04:24AM

Well at least you see the problem. Broadly, I see two solutions. I'll address the scarier one first.

1) The talking animals could become "angels," through augmentation or genetic meddling. I can imagine a future where people are engineered to be benevolent -- given a true democracy with less hawks than doves, I expect the that the doves will vote the hawks into obsolescence once they have the ability and see the problem clearly. Maybe this never comes to pass (why would the hawks want the doves to have a true democracy?), but let's assume for a moment that it does; the kicker is that this has to be done globally, or else there will be some hawks somewhere still trying to compete with the doves. There must be some interim moment where men are still not angels, and they are given absolute authority over all mankind. This moment may never end.

2) We could accept some of the horrors anarcho-capitalism, which is really just tribal warfare taken to its natural conclusion, which is really just evolution taken to its natural conclusion, which is really just thermodynamics taken to its natural conclusion, and develop protocols which incentivise more dovish behavior on the part of hawks. Mutually assured destruction is one such protocol -- it is understood that any group capable of destroying the world cannot be directly attacked. Bitcoin is another such protocol -- if decentralised money is information then it can be destroyed at will, and the physical capture of an opponents stronghold becomes less desirable than if that stronghold contains a stockpile of gold. I can imagine a future where distributed uranium enrichment, Decentralised Autonomous Organisations, and cheap energy/food production make war with any surviving societies intolerable and embargoes practically useless. There would still be horrible, horrible things happening. There would be crazy cults and sadistic torturers, but there would also be free societies doing something totally different. The only way to stop all of the bad shit is to play world police.

Is Congress a character in a youtube video now? Makes sense, I guess. What wild and crazy thing will Donald do next? How will congress react? Well, I hope with Articles of Impeachment. Donald, you're fired. And appropriate end to a Reality Show.

We're going to be looking into it. Believe me, we'll look into it. This country and, frankly, the world has a drug problem, a massive problem. So I want to get this absolutely right. We’re going to do something about it. Tom was a very early supporter of mine, a great guy. Loyal. But he did introduce the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act of 2016. He introduced it. And a lot, a lot of Congressmen voted for it. On both sides. I think there's blame on both sides. And the president signed it. Not President Donald J. Trump. President Barack Hussein Obama. Your president. But nobody impeached him. So I inherited a mess. Which I'll need at least two terms to fix. Probably two and a half, to be perfectly honest with you. #MAGA #TRUMP2020 #RepealThe22nd 🇺🇸

“Now, I did not go along with this. I wasn’t here at the time. I was actually out getting breast cancer treatment. I don’t know that I would have objected. I like to believe I would have, but the bottom line is, once the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] kind of, the upper levels at the DEA obviously said it was okay, that’s what gave it the green light.”— Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), interview on CNN’s “The Lead,” [cnn.com] Oct. 16, 2017

But on March 14, USA Today reported that McCaskill “dove back into the legislative and political arena on Monday, returning to Washington after three weeks of intensive treatment for breast cancer in St. Louis.” She held a 30-minute call that day to tell reporters she was back at work.

[...] On March 17, the day the DEA bill was approved, she voted at 1:43 p.m. to approve a resolution holding the chief executive of the website backpage.com in contempt for allegedly refusing to cooperate in an investigation of sex trafficking. McCaskill even appeared on the floor to make the case for approval of the resolution.

[...] McCaskill for two days has left the impression that she was away from the Senate, dealing with health issues, when the bill hobbling the DEA was passed.

On Oct. 16, she told CNN she was away that week, dealing with her breast cancer. Then, a day later, she was silent when an NPR host asserted she was absent from the Senate that day because of her health issues. She should have said she had checked her schedule and that was a mistake.

She told CNN she’d “like to believe” she would have opposed the bill and stopped it. But the reality is that she was there — and she missed the opportunity that she seeks now. She earns Four Pinocchios.

So if there is a problem with a law, perhaps instead of just trying to inflame the situation, the summary should provide a link to the law.

The opioid crisis is a sad situation.Congress makes the rules, the FDA and DEA control supply which raises prices, the industry profits, and the country and especially the users loose.To say that the game is out of balance because the DEA has less muscle than they are used to kind of misses the point that the whole game is broken.

To understand how this particular law fits into this, one would have to look at the law.

Let me be clear, he resigned before he started working for my DEA. So he never missed a day of work in the House of Representatives. He calls it withdrawal. Meaning he pulled himself out. And another thing, I'm a big business guy. I'm all for our fine pharmaceutical industry. But the opioid crisis is an emergency, and I am saying, officially, right now, it is an emergency. It's a national emergency. We're going to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money on the opioid crisis. It is a serious problem the likes of which we have never had. Believe me, I want our pharma sector to make money, a lot of money. But not at the expense of the health of the American people. Because I always, always put the American people first. #MAGA 🇺🇸